One morning, I was feeling the need to take my camera for a walk; maybe a macro walk. So I put on my macro lens and went over to my local Green Acres in Citrus Heights. I like walking through their garden and they don’t mind me taking pictures.
Here’s some of what I captured that morning.
With my macro need taken care of, I felt much better and the day seemed brighter.
It’s been a while since we went to Placerville to take photos. The town got the name Old Hangtown because it was known as a vigilante area. Here’s a bit of history.
The history of Placerville, formerly Hangtown and Old Dry Diggins, has its roots in mining and was once known for its notorious reputation for vigilante justice carried out by hangings. Old Dry Diggins was a gold mining camp on Hangtown Creek established in 1848.
They had hung (pardon the pun) onto the old name until a few years ago when they took down the dummy hanging from a pole where the hanging tree once stood. But the past still lingers. No more hangings; just a small tourist area with old buildings and shops.
Here are photos from our recent visit.
We had a great couple of hours walking Main Street and having lunch. And, yes, we did some shopping!
This is my lucky morning. I was trying to think of how to approach Brian of Bushboy’s challenge on fragments when I remembered taking my new Fujifilm XT3 camera down to Old Sacramento for some practice in May of 2020. My photo buddies and I masked up for the morning and drove down to the waterfront. I was trying all sorts of photography, like these closeups.
You can all these fragments of a train, boxes near the train depot and the gate closing in a train. I thought my new camera did well.
Could a fragment be a moment in time? Here we have some children having fun on the swings in front of the old school house in Old Sacramento enjoying their portion of play time.
Oh, I just love the candy shop and the tasty free and for purchase treats they offer. Can a candy shop be fragmented into separate bins of candy?
My final image isn’t a fragment, but an image of a train that has been moved elsewhere.
Since that day, my Fuji and I have been on all sorts of adventures. I’ve grown to love that camera, but, like life, it took some getting used to.
Thank you Brian for taking me on my fragmented memory. Looking back is such fun. When you reply to Brian’s post please remember to link to it and use the Lens-Artists tag. Last week was such fun as we saw all your buggy images. Some species I’d never seen before. Next week, look for Tina’s challenge on her Travels and Trifles blog. I wonder what she has in store for us. Until then, stay safe!
I’m keeping my promise made in my post on May 24, It’s All Happening at the Zoo. Today I’m showing you images of flowers taken at the WPA Rock Garden in William Land Park across the road from the Sacramento Zoo.
What’s a rock garden? Wikipedia has a full history and description for you here. Our small WPA Rock Garden was built by the WPA in 1940. The WPA was an employment and infrastructure program created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 during the Great Depression. In 1988 Daisy Mah, a park employee, put her vision for the current garden into fruition. Its paths wind in, out and around, and is maintained by a group of volunteers.
We enjoy walking through the garden looking for small gems. Marlene was with me and is good at finding insects, but none were found that morning. But there were many beautiful floral delights. Here are some of them.
This was a great way to end a visit to the zoo. We’ll be back!
Oh my, we were late in getting to the Sacramento Zoo and the small parking lot in William Land Park was almost full. And, the big yellow school busses were dropping off school aged kids. It was going to be a tough day of photography! I’m guessing the big cats already enjoyed their bones, because the ones that were in their enclosure were just about to nap.
One cheetah had begun to rest when the other one came over and this happened.
When we got to the giraffe enclosure, Cheyenne, the new young giraffe was out in the yard. What a treat!
All in all, it was a pretty good morning at the zoo after all. Next we went to the WPA Rock Garden, and I’ll show you that in my next post.
It’s hard to remember the cold, rainy weather when the sun is shining and the temperature is in the low ’90 degrees (fahrenheit), but that’s where we were just last month. Given a nice day, Ray and I went to find the small tulip patch at Jensen Botanical Gardens. We didn’t realize just how small would be! But, the tulips were beautiful just the same.
After that, we went to my favorite floral place, Green Acres Nursery.
Flowers and macro are my therapy. I hope you enjoyed seeing these as much as I had photographing them. As for the weather, we went from the high ’60s to low ’90s in one day. Fortunately our furnace broke a couple of days ago and the air conditioner still works. Stop to enjoy the flowers everyone!
I have been remiss in posting. This is caused by some traveling and a broken computer. You don’t realize how much, as a photographer, you depend on your computer until you don’t have it. Not only could I not edit photos, I couldn’t get to my archived images. Frustrated doesn’t begin to explain how I felt.
So here I am playing catch up. For this post I’m showing you images from the nesting trees where great egrets and blue herons build their nests each year. The birds feel safe there because the two trees are in the middle of a gully. One sits in the nest while its mate flies and brings back twigs. It’s fun to watch them.
This is a stretch for my Tamron 18 – 300mm lens but I did get some nice images.
This is about the only instance where I can predict they will be flying. This type of photography helps me learn how to watch carefully and be fast.
More to come!
I had two motivators for visiting the Sacramento Zoo recently. 1. I was gone for almost a month and hadn’t seen the new baby giraffe now named Cheyenne and, 2. I wanted to test out a new lens. With my Nikon, I had an 18-200mm lens which was a perfect walk-around lens. Unfortunately, Fujifilm doesn’t make a lens with that type of zoom. Recently Tamron came out with an 18-300mm lens for Fuji and Sony. So I bought the Fuji mount. The only drawback is its lack of an aperture ring on the lens. I was told that I could assign that function to the front dial and use the top dial to change the aperture.
When I purchased the lens, I was told that Fuji would make the switch automatically and when I put my Fuji lens back on it would revert back. I played with it while at the zoo and didn’t quite do it correctly. I ended up with sharp but noisy images. Thank heavens for Topaz!
The zoo didn’t disappoint. The cheetah was walking around; not running.
The red panda was walking the branches instead of sleeping.
The giraffes were being giraffes. Have you ever seen a two-headed, six-legged giraffe? We did get to see Cheyenne, but she was behind a fence and quickly went back inside with her mother.
The river otters were in their hammock.
And the lions were preparing for a nap.
One of the Okapi was out eating.
I almost forgot the alligator.
So, this was my morning at the zoo with friends Marlene, Laura and Ray. It’s good to be home and doing photography with friends.
Happy April Fool’s Day everyone. And thank you Donna for this tricky challenge. Tricky for me because I don’t create creative images. But I do like to play with Photoshop filters. I enjoy trying one by one to see what they would do to an image. It’s fun. Here are some examples.
If you’ve been following this blog, you know I like to zoom my lens in and out and slow my shutter speed down. Yes, I’ll stop at a neighborhood carnival just to take pictures. And holiday lights are perfect subjects too.
Here are some single shots:
I’ll admit that this was a difficult challenge for me since I’m not a truly creative person. I can see an opportunity and take it while composing a picture, and I’m venturing a little bit into Photoshop. So Donna, thanks for the gentle push. Please link to Donna’s post when you reply and use the Lens-Artists tag so it will show up in the Reader.
Thanks to all of you for showing us your New Experiences last week. I enjoyed them all and learned more about plays, bees, hang gliding and more. Next week our guest host, Siobhan of Bend Branches will be leading our challenge, so look for her post.
Interested to learn more about the Lens-Artists Challenge and join us, click here for more information.
During our three-week rain, we were needing to get out with our cameras. So, we decided to re-visit our favorite indoor venues: The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and Antique Trove in Roseville.
We’ve been to the Crocker Art Museum many times so as I walked around I was looking for new art and maybe a new slant on things. I settled on shadows. Here are some art and shadows.
Some walls and indoor architecture were interesting also.
The Antique Trove always has new items and booths to explore. I was attracted by the neon signs. Of course all of them were advertising beer.
Here are some other items I found interesting.
Where do you go when it rains and you want to take your camera out? We have more museums to explore in the greater Sacramento area. We do need some more rain to get us out of this drought, but maybe not those atmospheric rivers we had. If I had my way, it would rain at night and the sun would shine during the day!
Slow Shutter Speed 